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Fern Fanny
Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.

WOMEN'S NEED OF RECREATION

I read an article the other day on working-men's clubs, which set me thinking. In it was set forth the necessity, after a man's hard day's work, of an evening of rest, away from home, where he should find light and warmth, and boon companionship, other than is to be found in the corner grocery.

Now this is well, were there not a better way, as I believe. I am not about to propose clubs for working-women, because our police reports show every day that they have existed for a long time – thanks to "corner groceries" – and that they are made of any implement that comes handy, and result in bruised flesh and a broken head. This being the case, I cannot see why the working-woman, as well as the working-man, does not need, after a hard day's work, "light, warmth, and boon companionship of an evening, away from home." Nay, all the more, since work, hard as her husband may, it is often in the fresh, open air; or, if not, he has it going and returning, and the boon companionship of his fellow-workmen with it; while she, with "Ginx's last baby" to look after, in some noisome tenement house, stands over the perpetual wash-tub or cooking-stove, with two or three half-grown children hanging to her draggled skirts, never exchanging her unwomanly rags, not even perhaps to mass for a hurried prayer in the church which, God be thanked, is free alike to poor and rich, and which suggests, in its own way, a distant heaven for her.

Thinking over all this, I said why not Germanize this thing? Why not have clubs for working-men and their families, with innocent amusement minus the drink? Isn't it possible? Or if not, I wish it were, for the poor harassed women's sake. I only see the millennial germ of it; but this I know, that the wives need it more, far more, than their husbands, the wide world over, and in every strata of society; by the pains of motherhood, even in favorable conditions; by her intenser nervous organization; by her indoor confinement and narrowing, petty detail-worries; by the work that ends not at sundown as does his. By the wakeful, unrestful nights, which every mother knows; this is the hardest, most wearing kind of work, no matter what may be said of the husband, who has his sleep at least; who demands that in every family exigency as his right, and as the foundation of his ability to labor for his family. Ah! what if the wife and mother, with less strength, feebler organization, should make a stand for this? even when, in addition to her other cares, she helps in some outside honest way to support the family?

Does she not, too, need warmth, light, and boon companionship of an evening? While it is true that

 
"All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy,"
 

remember it is just as true of Jack's wife as it is of Jack, and the founders of "Working-men's Clubs" would do well to put this into their foundation.

I wish that some of the pains taken to make human beings "good" were expended in trying to make them happy. Particularly is this necessary in regard to young people, though it is a fact that should be recognized much more than it is, in the conditions of every human being. Let a little sunshine into the outward circumstances surrounding them before you begin to talk about a future state. There are children, and grown people too, so cob-webbed over with care and misery, that all talk, how "good" soever, is useless. They want some brightness infused into their lives. It may be a wife – weary, body and soul; tired of plodding; she needs some kind voice to say (alas! how little husbands think of it!): "Come, leave all your cares just now, this minute, and if you can't leave without I take your place, I'll take it, and it will be a gain to both of us; for you have come just to that spot where you must stop to rest, or fail entirely." It may be a little child under your care, perhaps your own, perhaps another's; who is not really "bad," but only troublesome. It wants change; a ramble in the Park, or a ramble somewhere; something to see and talk about, and happify it; some new objects to occupy its mind and thoughts; and the more intelligent the child is, the more necessary this becomes. Many a child is punished because its active mind, having no food, becomes a torment to itself and others. Give it food! Take it up to the Park and show it the animals there. Tell it of their habits, and the way they live in the countries from which they were taken. This is a cheap pleasure, it is true, and may, though it ought not to be, a very commonplace one to you; but you have no idea how it freshens the mind and body of the little one. Sometimes I almost think that happiness is goodness. Certainly, till the hard and difficult lesson of life is thoroughly learned, it is wise to lend a helping hand to those who are stumbling after, lest they fall by the way to rise no more.

Perhaps you have some good servants in your house whose underground, plodding life needs relief, who have grown sharp and querulous on account of it; whose lot needs brightening a bit. Send them or take them to some place of amusement; give them a holiday, or half a holiday if you can do no better. You have no idea how this break in their wearisome round will lighten toil for many a day; and more because you thought of it, perhaps, than from the pleasure the amusement afforded.

Life presses heavily on most of us in one shape or another. They are not always the greatest sufferers, whose barrel of meal and cruse of oil fail. Therefore, when I open a church door, and the first sentence I hear is about "An Awful God," I sometimes want to invite the speaker to rest himself a bit, and let me try my hand at it. I believe that most people want soothing, and comforting, and encouraging, more than denouncing or frightening, even though the latter be done with good intentions. I know most women have been "punished" enough during the week, without being threatened with it in another world on Sundays. Take that poor soul with a drunken husband, who tries to support him and herself, and no end of children, by washing, and whose husband comes home only to demand her money, and smash up her wash-tub and table and chairs for his amusement. Would you talk to that woman about an "awful God," when she stole away to church for a crumb of comfort on Sunday? You had much better buy her a new wash-tub, and put her brute of a husband where – but it won't do to say all one thinks, even out of "meetin'."

THE GOOD OLD HYMNS

Did you never know any person who was brought up on the good old Zion-hymns, whom they ever failed to move to the foundations when heard? The feet moving on unholy errands linger on their way past the church door, as the melody floats out upon the air. That man – who has wasted life, and energy, and talent, which might have blessed mankind, to reap only the whirlwind – he is back again with his little head upon his mother's lap, while she sings that same hymn, which will never grow old, about "the beautiful river." His eyes moisten as he thinks how pained she would be, were she living, to know him now. The hymn ceases, and the low benediction follows, and as the worshippers emerge, he recollects himself, and with an impatient pshaw! passes on. What, he moved at a "conventicle hymn"? He, who for years has never crossed the threshold of a church! He? who believes neither in prayer nor priests, Bible nor Sundays? He, who has "outgrown all that"? Ah! but he hasn't. He can't outgrow it. It is there. It will come, whether he desires it or no. Come in spite of all his efforts to laugh or reason it away. Come, though he lives in open derision and mockery of that religion whose divine precepts he cannot efface from his mind. Come, as it did to John Randolph, who, after years of atheism and worldliness and ambition, left on record, "that the only men he ever knew well and approached closely, whom he did not discover to be unhappy, were sincere believers of the Gospel, who conformed their lives, as far as the nature of man can permit, to its precepts." "Often," he says, "the religious teachings of his childhood were banished wholly by business or pleasure; but after a while they came more frequently, and stayed longer, until at last they were his first thoughts on waking and his last before going to sleep." Said he, "I could not banish them if I would."

"Now and then I like to go into a church," said a young man apologetically to a companion who was deriding the idea. "Priestcraft! priestcraft!" exclaimed his companion. "Tell me what possible good can it do you?" "Well," said the young man, "somehow, when I hear those hymns it is like hearing the pleading voice of my mother as I left home to become the graceless fellow I am now. I cannot tell you how they move me, or how they make me wish I were better. If I ever do become better, it will be because I cannot separate them from all that seems, in my better moments, worth embodying in the word 'home.'" Walter Scott said to his son-in-law, when he was on his death-bed, "Be a good man, Lockhart – be a good man; nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." It were easy to multiply instances where earth's gifted and greatest have borne similar testimony, after having tested all that the world had to offer, as an equivalent for "that peace which passeth all understanding."

Parents sometimes say with tears, my boy has forgotten all my teachings. You don't know that. You can't say that till the grave closes over him. Said a good mother I knew, who kept on singing those hymns, and whose faith never faltered through long years, when her only son disgraced the family by intemperance, "John will come right by and by. He must." And day after day, when he was brought home helpless, the mere wreck and libel of manhood, she smilingly repeated to all cavillers: "John will come right. I know it. Every day I ask God to give him back to himself, and I know He will do it."

And John did come right. Out of that horrible pit of degradation he emerged "clothed and in his right mind." He is now in good business standing, owns the house he lives in, is the comfort and pride of the patient wife who, with his mother, waited woman-like, Christ-like, all those weary years for his return. I myself have seen him in church, when the Sacramental wine was passed to him, bow his head reverently and humbly over the cup without raising it to his lips.

Never despair of a child who strays away from those hymns. Somewhere between the cradle and the tomb be sure those hymns will find him out.

Only he to whom heaven is a reality, can possibly preserve his self poise in the jarring conflict of life. How can man, constantly disheartened and disappointed as he is, by the apparent triumph of wrong over right, by the poverty of those of whom the world is not worthy, in contrast with the gilded, full fed, honored wickedness which seems to give the lie to everything to which our better natures cling, how can man, under such circumstances, walk hopefully in the narrow path, if beyond and through the mists of the valley he discerns not the serene mountain-tops? No – only the Christian can say in view of earthly loss and disappointments: "It is well – let Him do what seemeth to Him good." Only the Christian – nor need he be – nor is he —of necessity a "church member," – can say – "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

Ladies, Don't Do It. – Every modest woman should set her face against any fashion which could for a moment identify her with those women who have no claim to modesty, no matter how "stylish" that fashion may be termed. This word "stylish" has much to answer for in this regard. Dr. Johnson's rule was a good one: "Dress so that no person can possibly remember what you have on." Unfortunately, the reverse of this rule is that which is generally aimed at, even by women who in other matters command respect.

A STRANGER IN GOTHAM

This unfortunate is easily recognized in New York, by its frantic bewilderment in attempting to cross Broadway; now standing still, now leaping forward, now running back, in that agony of indecision which is the best and surest recipe for a broken neck. Also by walking with its mates three abreast, in that crowded thoroughfare, as if room was as plenty there as in its native Frogtown. Another sure sign of its origin is in its continuous and demonstrative waving of the handkerchief, umbrella, parasol, basket, or any other weapon handy, at a desired omnibus driver, who of course knows a native at once by the quiet uplifted forefinger. Once inside the omnibus, the stranger may be known, by ferreting anxiously in all his pockets for a five-dollar bill, instead of handing up the ready sixpence with which the native avoids eternal self-reproach and the maledictions of hurried fellow-passengers. Also, the stranger may be known by his extreme and stunning toggery at places of public amusement, where fashion chooses to sit in quiet raiment.

If the stranger is a Bostonian, he may at once be recognized by wearing – without regard to his profession – a sepulchral suit of solemn black, with immaculately polished boots and bosom, and a stand-aside-I-am-holier-than-thou air, intended to crush the sons of Belial who behold it. Let it not be supposed, however, by the uninitiated, that this, by any means, precludes him from joining any gay or festive scene which New York holds out as a reward of merit, to any inflated Pharisee, for a prolonged and painful spell of good behavior.

The stranger within the gate is sometimes the angel unawares; in which case she may be seen innocently and promiscuously distributing pennies, here and there, among bogus "objects of charity," and feeling good, as she takes a last pitiful look at the painted ulcer on the l – imb as sound as her own. Or she may be seen, verdantly buying one of those huge cabbage bouquets, in alternate mutton-chop streaks of white and red, got up for the delectation of strangers, and pensively applying it to her gratified nose, when her head is not spinning a teetotum after some new freak of fashion, as displayed in a new arrangement of passing feather, ribbon, or bow.

As if the equilibrium of a New Yorker could be disturbed by any such trifles! No. Omnibus horses may rise and fall, like the waves of the sea. "Extra" boys may yell themselves black in the face. Regiments in all the hues of the reign-beau, may come and go; but unless somebody knocks the well-beloved cigar from his jaded lip, Satan may claim him for his own, for aught he would move a muscle.

MY JOURNEY TO QUEBEC AND BACK AGAIN

If there is a feeling akin to Heaven, it is to reach home after a long journey. And this I take to be quite consistent with great enjoyment of all the beautiful things and places one has seen in one's absence – aye, and people, too. To sit down in your own dear old chair, and kick your slippers across the room; to talk without being overheard; to eat with only those whom you love about you – for this promiscuous hotel-feeding is repulsive to me beyond the power of expression. I think I am peculiar on this point, but it seems to me as great an individual profanation as to admit the same number of people to see you perform your toilette for dinner. That there are people to whom it is one of the delights of travel to sit down to such hecatombs of food with such a menagerie of human beings, I am well aware. I am not one of them.

The first place we visited was Saratoga; don't be frightened. I leave "New York correspondents" of newspapers all over the country to give fabulous accounts of fabulous belles, and the number of their lovers, which will very generally be found to correspond with the number of their trunks. I am not going to venture on so hackneyed a theme, hotel life being the same at Saratoga as anywhere else – simply one eternal dress and eat. The place itself was what I went to see – the springs – the grounds – not the peacocks that were in them. The ornamental grounds attached to the springs are very lovely and attractive, as well as faultlessly kept, affording abundant opportunities to sighing lovers and bread-and-butter maidens. Contrary to my expectations, I found the waters very palatable, though, were I compelled by fashion to wash down my morning orisons with ten or twelve tumblers full, I might change my mind. It is curious how long they have bubbled up there, as freely as now, the Indians having partaken of them a fabulous time back. The fountain might be made more attractive, did some pretty girl do the tumbler-dipping for visitors, instead of the matter-of-fact jacket and trousers who handed it to us – I merely throw this in as a suggestion. We stepped into a shop opposite the springs, to see the operation of bottling and corking the waters performed by machinery; the celerity with which this was accomplished was very gratifying to my Yankee chain-lightning notion of things, and being a Yankee, of course it was not out of my line to think what a very nice piece of property it must be to hold, for this and other palpable reasons. I trust all the sentimental Misses who have had "offers" over those tumblers of water will forgive me.

Stepping into one or two shops in the village, to hunt up some nick-nacks for a dear little girl at home, I encountered some familiar New York shop faces. One woman told me that she hired a shop there every year during the "season," and that many other New-Yorkers did the same, retreating again when the tide of fashion set cityward. They calculate rightly – the shopping mania never will be burned out of women while there is a timber left of her; and were there nothing but an old horse-blanket in the village, she would buy it, if she had to throw it away the next minute. I wish it to be understood that I do not share this furore of my sex, as I never enter a shop of my own free will, until my clothes show signs of dropping off my back unless replaced.

The lady visitors at Saratoga get themselves up most stunningly, to walk through the streets to the springs, with their white embroidered petticoats peeping from beneath their rainbow-colored silk morning-dresses, and black-lace veils thrown Spanish fashion over their heads, making unhandsome faces, if only refined, look picturesque. This annual wave of folly, said I, must send its ripples farther than the circumference of this village. I had hardly made the remark, before two barrel-shaped country lasses passed, with tawdry, cheap imitations in delaine of the Saratoga silk morning-dress, and with coarse black veils thrown round their sunburnt faces. It was a capital burlesque, though, I assure you, the maidens themselves were far from regarding it in that light.

The private cottages on the grounds of the hotel, for families and parties who choose to live by themselves, are nice little cosey affairs. This is a much pleasanter, and, to my mind, a much more civilized arrangement than living at the public hotel; but, as the execrable organ-grinder wouldn't stop playing for sixpence, so the landlord, knowing well the value of peace and quietness, charges accordingly.

From Saratoga we went the usual route to Lake George, performing the last miles by stage coach. That's nice, thought I, – a change of conveyance wonderfully eases the limbs —i. e., if they are not past easing. I was hasty; – a heavy rain set in, and came driving first into the windows, through which, at the risk of dislocating our elbows, we spread our umbrellas for spouts. Then the roof began to leak, and gentlemen shrugged the shoulders of their linen travelling coats, and whispered, "Rheumatism;" and ladies benevolently offered the corners of their travelling cloaks and shawls to the victims; and temporary plugs were made for the roof, of "The New York Times," which we found "would not hold water;" and night came on, and the rain grew more persistent, and we got accustomed to sitting in a puddle; and the wheels sank in the mud, and the old coach "tetered" – as the children say – now this side, now that, and the most inveterate joker of the party had long been dumb; when the coachman, who had been jogging on in a helpless, despairing way, gave his whip the professional crack, which sent our noses up to the roof for a last final rub, and the wet, draggled, muddy, hungry, dead-and-alive crew were dragged out piecemeal over the wheels of the coach, on to the piazza of the "Fort William Henry Hotel," where were a swarm of colored waiters, where was a band of music on the piazza, where was a sumptuous parlor of interminable length – mirror, tête-à-tête, and piano. But, unfortunately, none of all those could we eat or drink. Woman wants but little here below, but I'll tell all you landlords what she does want. After sitting in a puddle, beside enduring a shower-bath at the same time through the roof of the coach, a hot cup of tea it might not be unreasonable for her to expect. It is very well for men to "pooh!" – they can afford to be philosophical – they who run to the bar-room and get "set up," as they call it, on their arrival, or console themselves for cold tea, sour berries, and tough beefsteak, with the infallible cigar.

The question is how their philosophy would hold out if there were no cigars to be had, and no bar-room, and they were shaking in an ague of cold? I hate a fussy woman who is always digging down to the bottom of hotel salt-cellars, and microscopically inspecting potatoes; but I will say, that when every thread of a woman's raiment is dripping, it takes a more angelic being than I am to go shivering to bed on a cup of cold tea, past an army of darkies whom you are too vexed with their employer to bribe.

The next morning it still rained, and as there was no inducement in-doors to remain, our breakfast being worse than our tea of the night before, we made our escape into the little steamer "Minnehaha" to see Lake George; and lovely it was, spite of fog, and mist, and rain, as we glided away between its green shores, and past its fairy islands, startling out the little birds from their leafy nests into short, swift circles over our heads, then back again, where never perhaps, since the creation, man's foot has trod.

Lake George is a little gem, though we saw it only through a vale of mist, the sun absolutely refusing to brighten it up for one brief moment. "Such a pity. It must be surpassingly lovely on a fine day," we all kept saying to one another, as we anxiously watched the gray clouds. Everybody seemed to be in good spirits, however, and some ladies, more romantic than wise, took their stations on the upper deck, spite of the slanting rain and mist, giving their gentlemen friends constant employment in tucking shawls round their feet and shoulders, till they looked like bandaged mummies. After a while they came down, and I saw certain mysterious-looking flasks drawn from the aforementioned gentlemen's pockets, and held to their blue lips, by which token I concluded that brandy sometimes does for a woman what sentiment will not.

And now again the old lumbering stage-coach is in requisition for a seven-mile jog, and trot, and plough through the mud, and we pack in, like layers of herring, and there is plenty of joking and laughing, for many of the party are young and merry, and it was blessed to listen to their ringing laughter, and look upon their bright eyes. Many a good thing was said, though had it not been half as good, we were all prepared to laugh upon the slightest provocation, for our legs and arms were bundled up in such a way, as rendered "dignity" quite out of the question, and gravity an impossibility. At last we arrived (I declare I believe they called the thing a "hotel") at the foot of Lake Champlain, where we were to dine. "Be advised by me," said one of the lady passengers to me, "and don't go in to dinner. I did it once, and since, when I stop here, I bring my own sandwiches." It is sometimes fun to sit down to a two-pronged-fork dinner, and the rest of us were in the humor for whatsoever the gods sent, so in we went. The staple commodities of the table were soft huckleberries and fried fish. Two girls – daughters, I suppose, of our host – waited upon table; that is to say, they rotated in a certain ghostly fashion, with their arms hanging by their sides, and their eyes fixed upon the floor, and were about as much use as two statues on castors, as it was impossible to catch either their eyes or attention. "What on earth is a fellow to call them?" asked one hungry man. "Waiter!" – that didn't appeal to them. "Girl!" it was no use. "You, there!" in a tone of impatience. The rock of Gibraltar couldn't have stood it better.

Now, if this was a preconcerted bashfulness, it worked admirably, for we could get nothing that was not immediately before us, unless some philanthropic fellow-sufferer, in pity, sent a pie spinning à la Ravel, down the table. Well, at any rate we had our money's worth of fun, and could bear it much better than if the parlor had been resplendent with mirrors, sofas, tête-à-têtes, and "grand pianos," which so often pave the way for a terrible disappointment as to everything else. We expected little, and got less; but those imperturbable, ghostly girls cost me, many a time and oft during the rest of my journey, a button or a hook and eye, as the picture came up before me.

Talk of Lake George. It is to Lake Champlain what a pretty, little, simpering, pink-and-white doll of a girl is to a magnificent woman, the royal sweep of whose robe about her faultless limbs as she moves, sets all the pulses wild. In mercy to us the clouds parted, and the bright sun broke through at last. You should have seen it then – the queenly Lake Champlain – with the bold, dark islands that seemed to float upon its silvery smoothness, with the heavy rain-clouds gathering up their forces, and gliding majestically away in the distance, leaving a sky as soft and blue as ever arched over Eden. On one side the broad, green, cultivated fields, stretched away fair in the sunlight; on the other, pile upon pile, were the huge, dark mountains, up whose steep sides the soft mist was wreathing itself in a thousand fantastic, graceful shapes. It was a moment such as all of us have sometimes known, when pleasure is so intense as to become almost pain; when language fails; when the eye fills, and there seems more "Bible" between the blue covers of sea and sky than you ever looked upon, or listened to before, and everywhere you turned, a voice – "the still small voice" – seemed saying, all this I made for you– for you. Now you might thunder the "terrors of the law" in my ears ten months, and it would not move me; but I feel like the veriest wretch alive, when I so intensely enjoy that for which my daily life is so paltry a return.

The boat in which we performed this trip was a Yankee boat, called "The America," and it was enough to rouse one's patriotism to go through it; the shining neatness of its decks and cabins; its efficient and well-mannered stewardess, always on hand, yet never in the way, understanding, as if by intuition, what everybody wanted; the nice, hot, orderly supper, with waiters that had ears, and knew how to use their feet. I was glad it was named "The America." I was as proud of the beautiful boat as if I had laid her keel. But all pleasures must have an end; and our destination being Montreal, we were soon to leave thrifty, go-ahead Yankee-land and all its peculiarities behind. As we passed the pretty town of Burlington, the residence of the poet "Saxe," we all waved him our most cordial good wishes, which we trust the winds bore him safely.

Upon leaving the boat for the cars, which were to take us to Montreal – Imprimis, a hideous, cavernous looking depot, with one poor, miserable lamp to help us break our necks by – a great talk of "custom-house officers examining trunks," and "smuggling," etc. What a jabbering of French when we took our seat in the cars! and what exorbitant fares for travelling through such a gloomy, God-forsaken, pine-stump, log-cabin looking country! Sleep came to my relief on a safe shoulder, after I had relieved myself by the above speech. At last we reached the funny, foreign, forlorn, cushionless ferry-boat that was to land us in Montreal, and as true as preaching, in got that woman with the seven babies, who had traveled with us all day, calm as an oyster in its shell, though the whole seven were screeching alternately and eternally, poor little toads, and still continued screeching, with some real or imaginary pain under their aprons. I did hope the poor things were going to bed somewhere; but no, there they sat, bolt upright in the ferry-boat, all in a row – those miserable seven – with their mouths wide open, sending forth the discordant-est cries, and that prolific female never even perspired! but sat with her fat hands folded over her belt, calmly accepting her conjugal destiny! And this is Montreal, said I, as they stood me up on the pier with the trunks, and half deafened with the French jabber about me, I essayed to climb up into a thing (a cross between a New York omnibus and a "Black Maria") that was waiting to convey us to the hotel. And this is Montreal. Well, I shouldn't care if it was Sodom and Gomorrah, if there's only a bed in it. When I mention that our destination was "The Donegana House," every traveller will understand that to be but another name for sumptuous fare and the most assiduous attention at the hands of the handsome landlord and his well-disciplined corps of servants.

In all honesty, I cannot say that I like Montreal. It may be a very substantially built town – I believe that is what they say of it – but one likes beauty as well as strength, and my eye ached for something ornamental in the way of flower-gardens, or, in fact, in any other way. Red coats there were in plenty, but they did not supply the deficiency. Then the never-ceasing bell-ringing, from early dawn to sunset, would soon drive me as mad as our "glorious Fourth" does every year, when gunpowder and bells and cannon have it all their own way, till one is tempted to wish one never had any "forefathers."